A parliamentary commission in Pakistan rejected legislation that would have outlawed the forced conversion of religious minorities. The bill had advanced by the government’s ministry for human rights, but the ministry for religious affairs categorized it as “non-Islamic.”

The proposed legislation would have made it a crime to force a young girl to accept Islam. Young Christian and Hindu girls are sometimes abducted by men who compel them to accept Islam and to marry them. “This happens with the utmost impunity,” a human-rights activist told the Fides news agency.